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Deus
Ex: Human Revolution

Score:9.0 / 10

Albert Einstein is credited as saying, "It
is the business of the future to be dangerous." But what dangers might
we face? The creeping control and influence of multinational
corporations into our lives? The draconian measures adopted by
governments with ever more pious platitudes that it's all being done for
our protection? The growing privatization of "homeland security" and
proliferation of "Private Military Contractors"? The increasing
capabilities of robots and computer

systems employed for security and military
applications? The ballooning media conglomerates who blanket the masses
in carefully tailored message-driven propaganda while smaller and
increasingly marginalized outlets devolve into hysterics just to attract
attention? Or perhaps the danger is yet unknown, the fruits of
scientific labor which may deliver

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humanity's salvation or destruction based
simply on whose hand bears it. This is the world of Deus Ex: Human
Revolution, a world set fifteen years in the future that feels only
fifteen minutes away. It's a shadowy and shiny reflection of our world,
a mirror darkly that holds only a few cracks to break up the image.

While the original Deus Ex has gotten overly long in the tooth
graphically speaking, Human Revolution brings an all new level of high
end visuals to the series. Neon and LCD signs glow cheerfully while
fluorescents give a cooler light. Vehicles range from the conventional
car to the reverse trike to the VF-22 Osprey's jet powered grandchild,
and all of them look great. Character models are highly detailed across
the board, from the average human bystander complaining to the police to
the augmented gangbangers and mercenaries patrolling their respective
patches of turf. Even the mech designs strike the right note of
evolutionary realism, with small patrol bots and giant legged tanks
echoing the current UGVs that would be their forebears. Special effects
are not only sharply done but they feel like the part of the
environment, particularly the effects used for gas and electricity/EMP.
I didn’t notice much if any texture cracking, though character models
occasionally displayed a sort of running speckling, as if pixels were
dropping in and out of their faces or clothes. Contrary to a lot of the
mocking and consternation out there, I never really noticed the whole
“pee glasses” filter that other people were complaining about. There
were some areas which had a definite golden motif in their lighting, but
for myself, I think the whole thing is a miniscule element among a
panoply of bright lights and grimy surfaces.

I have to give the voice cast the big nod of approval for delivering a
broad range of deep and emotional performances. While Elias Toufexis
might not necessarily be incredible emotive in the role of Adam Jensen,
it actually works in a way that conveys the diminishment of humanity
that comes with augmentation. The best showcases for these vocal talents
come in the form of “social combat” sequences, extended dialogs that
require you to influence an NPC to come around to your way of thinking.
It’s almost worth deliberately blowing these sequences just to get the
full range of the character’s emotions. Even the little throwaway
conversations between NPCs are delivered perfectly, and occasionally
hide a little audio nod to some of the source material that influenced
the game. Beyond that, the sound effects and music are top flight.
Weapons fire sounds authoritative. The soundtrack is predominantly
cinematic and orchestral, with a little pop and club music thrown in at
appropriate spots. Nobody has any room to complain about audio execution
on this title.

Being such a drooling fan of the original
Deus Ex, and even after seeing the live demo at E3, I was determined to
hold the game to a high standard. I wasn’t going to give it a pass just
because it was shiny and new. For me, gameplay would be the most
important element that the developers had to hit. And I can honestly
that they came exceedingly close. The original game was heavily involved
in its conspiracy theory background, and the storyline was more an
exploration of how one man could be the culmination of thousands of
years of secret plots, or the catalyst of their destruction. Human
Revolution takes a different tack, focusing on mankind’s growing fusion
with technology and the threshold of directed human evolution promised
in transhumanism as its theme. While the transhumanist focus certainly
has a more immediate pull, I think they needlessly relegated the
conspiracy elements of the game to background noise, sometimes
literally. The game could have had a much better anchor with those
elements in place, giving the protagonist something bigger than just
finding his girlfriend. For a game as expansive as the original DX was
in scope, Human Revolution feels oddly cramped and slightly myopic. In
particular, level design and map variety offer up a lot of routes for
reaching objectives, but at the same time there aren’t a whole lot of
places to actually go in the larger scheme of things. You’re basically
bouncing between two major cities for most of the game, as well as a
couple different smaller locations whose stated location really doesn’t
mesh well with the environment. You could say an office building was on
the Moon and you’d really have very little one way or the other to
confirm or deny that statement. I get the feeling that Eidos Montreal
accidentally hewed too close to one of the shortcomings of the original
DX, based on the limitations of the Unreal 1 engine, when they could
have gone for more of an open world feel to the game.

While I’m all for giving players the choice to go in guns blazing and
playing the homicidal maniac versus stealthy infiltration marked only by
the occasional unconscious guard, I believe Eidos Montreal failed to
really think about the implications and applications of the tools that
the player would have available to them. My first playthrough was a mix
of straight killing with the judicious use of takedowns when I had to
keep quiet or the objective demanded a specific target merely end up in
the hospital instead of the morgue. I was struck by the fact that the
nonlethal weapons were unbelievably weak, such that somebody who had
just gotten a tranq dart in the back could easily be revived a few
moments later by their buddies who happened to be close by rather than
laying inert for the next few hours. I found it a rather glaring
omission that you didn’t at least have bean bag rounds for the shotgun,
or other non-lethal ammunition for otherwise lethal weapons,
particularly since you’d think weapons science would have advanced a lot
in fifteen years. The Typhoon cluster bomb system which looks so cool in
the videos only has two options: kill and overkill, when they could have
just as easily added a third non-lethal option. Seriously, if you have
the technology to turn a person into a living frag grenade without
killing them when it goes off, turning them into the center of a
hurricane of micro-flashbangs really shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
The fact that you can register headshots for lethal kills is cool and
all, but why not give players the chance to kneecap their targets and
take them out of commission that way? I found the takedown animations
interesting for the first few hours, but they could have done a lot more
both mechanically and contextually, like say using the stock of a combat
rifle or a reversed pistol grip behind the ear. Ditching the “battery”
use for the takedowns would have also been a good idea. I have a hard
time believing that clocking a guy is an equal expenditure of fatigue
compared to punching through concrete walls and deliberately expending
muscular energy and anti-noise to mute landings from falling medium
distances. And the less said about the boss battles, the better.

For all the myriad ways that Human Revolution comes up short, it excels
in a single point: you are immersed in the setting. It draws you in and
(with the exception of the aforementioned boss battles) lets you linger.
It pulls at your mind and triggers that strange feeling that the events
you’re seeing could very easily happen tomorrow. It makes you feel like
the world is reacting to your behaviors. The various pop culture and
geek references aside, and shortcomings notwithstanding, Human
Revolution gives you a world to experience and exercise in. For a game
that has such a tough act to follow, and such a long time between
installments, Eidos Montreal should be proud of what they’ve done while
figuring out how to do better next time. There’s plenty of room in the
Deus Ex universe for different stories to explore all the aspects of
that universe and I can hardly wait to experience the next one.